


What Was Promised

by Draco_sollicitus



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: A Girl Says Stark Rights, An Arya Stark Love Song, Angst, Arya loves Gendry, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I'm just very soft for these two, Mild Smut, Post Season 8 Episode 3, Post-Battle Loving, Spoilers for Battle of Winterfell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 15:17:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18640726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: A girl knows death very well; living, however, is a different tale.Arya Stark, after the Battle of Winterfell.(AKA the hurt/comfort fic that begged to be written after 8x03)





	What Was Promised

**Author's Note:**

> **Spoilers for Season 8 Episode 3**
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>  _Notes_  
>  This is my first time writing a Game of Thrones fic!!! I just had to write something after today's episode and after talking to some of my GoT friends. 
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> This fic DOES reference deaths that happened in the episode, as well as that KILLER ending. It's a bit of speculation for the next episode as well ;)

A girl has made a life out of knowing death; a girl has made a life out of never being seen.

Of course, a girl would never have foreseen slaying the embodiment of darkness - but when she takes the dagger in hand and makes what she assumes will be the last leap of her life:

A girl’s life changes.

Arya walks through the crowded hall, the people parting on either side of her.

“ _She did it,”_ some whisper, some cheering, some simply staring. “ _She saved us all._ ”

 _Not us all_ , she wants to say. _I saved my family. My pack._

Arya has never once in her life intended to be _the_ hero, just wanted to learn the way of death and avoid it for as long as possible until she couldn’t run anymore, but here she is, every pair of eyes in Winterfell on her as she walks through, fully alive.

Arya does not know what to do with their respect. She’s never wanted it.

And she’d tried, she had sincerely tried to point them towards the body of Theon, the half-kraken who turned out to be full-wolf in the end, she’d tried to say _he did it,_ he had the wounds and the look of stoic rage on his frozen face, he looked the part, but Bran, or what-used-to-be-Bran, had smiled his eerie little smile and said, _no. She did._

Now, she’s the Hero of Winterfell, and Jon can’t look at her without crying, and his girlfriend looks like she wants to cry only she can’t, and Sansa had picked her up in a hug that never seemed to end, and was meant only in love, but felt more like chains, and Arya feels anxiety clawing at her throat almost as badly as it had done in the library.

The Hound smiles at her and rumbles “ _she-wolf_ ” like it’s an endearment, and some part of her wonders if he really does care about her, but a girl does not care either way.

She is Arya Stark of Winterfell, Protector of the Living, the Killer of Death, the Warrior of the North, the She-Wolf.

She is no one.

The dissonance is too much for her to bear, so she hugs Sansa back, embraces Jon, accepts the solemn pat the Hound places on her shoulder, nods at the Dragon Queen, and leaves the hall, not answering any of the calls of her name.

A girl has no name.

She pulls her weapons belt free from her waist and throws it to the side. The dagger that killed the Night King joins it, metal against metal clanging satisfactorily in the darkness while she flees from a celebration of a girl who died when Joffrey ordered the sword to fall. Arya throws the weapons as hard as she can, but their weight does not leave her frame. It’s a weight she’ll bear the rest of her life.

It feels like she still hasn’t caught her breath, and she climbs and climbs the stairs until it feels like her legs will give out from underneath her, but when she closes her eyes, she sees Beric’s bleeding body, when she closes her eyes, she sees her father’s head on the stone, when she closes her eyes, she sees Mycah lying dead in the wood at the hands of the man who would have died tonight, for her and her alone.

Arya grabs at the stones, having halted in the hall on the top floor of what remains of Winterfell, and she sobs, no moisture from her eyes, just a ripping pain in her heart that makes her think wildly that maybe the Night King really did kill her after all.

She’s so lost in it, she can’t even jump in surprise when a warm hand grips her wrist, and an arm wraps around her waist, and a moment later, she discovers the reason for her lack of concern.

A girl knows friend from foe, after all.

“It’s alright,” a soft voice whispers in her ear while the hands guide her away from the wall and further down the corridor. “Hey, no need to cry.”

“I’m not crying.” Arya shoves at his hands and walks forward, but her knees tremble and a sob rips out from her anyway. “Go away.”

“So, the Night King didn’t knock some sense into you?”

Arya can’t manage a barbed response, and another shameful sob leaks out from her.

“Hey, whoa -” the hands are back, and Arya doesn’t fight him this time, just lets him guide her further along and into a room with a door that locks.

 _They can break down the door, stupid,_ she wants to snip, but then she remembers the dead are dead and she killed them. It’s...oddly not as comforting as she would have assumed.

When he leaves her side, Arya feels another flare of panic and reaches out to grab his wrist. “Don’t,” she whispers, her eyes fixed on a useless part of the floor, sensitive to every shadow that flickers from the torchlight on the wall; the dawn is still breaking, but it’ll be a bleak day, regardless of the victories of the morning.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t go.” Arya closes her eyes and breathes out through her nose. She can’t fight the horrible emptiness growing inside her, the one that took root years ago. The only person who’s come close to controlling that rot inside her is standing right here, and she can’t let him go.

“I won’t.”

 _One. Two. Three. Four._ Arya counts the stones with cracks in them, tracing the fissures to control her breathing.

“I think this is the longest we’ve gone without you hitting me.”

Arya turns to look at him, her concentration broken; her eyebrows lift despite the weight in her chest, and if anything, Gendry Waters looks pleased.

Gendry _Baratheon,_ some part of her corrects. After all, she’d never had any problem with thinking of Jon as a Stark.

A bastard’s still family.

A bastard’s still pack.

A girl has no name, after all - so why should he have to have one?

“Not the longest time,” she corrects softly, and if a girl could blush, she would.

She’d had to wash his come off her thighs not even twelve hours ago; Arya doesn’t see the point in blushing, but she thinks maybe for Gendry, she’d make an exception.

Gendry surprises her by not teasing her on the implication. Instead, he reaches out and tenderly pushes a lock of her dirty hair out of her face, his thumb running under her eye to clear out some of the dried blood that sits, sticky and tacky, on her cheek. Arya doesn’t know what to do with tender.

She isn’t sure she likes it.

A moment later, his other hand comes to frame her face, and his thumbs stroke over her cheekbones with not a word said between them, but something weighty and tangible in the air regardless.

“You did it,” he whispers reverently, eyes soft and mouth gentle like she’s never seen it. The gentle words sound almost strange in his accent -- Arya wants him to go back to barbs and taunts and loving teases. She wants the whole day to go back. She wants --

Arya shrugs. “Someone had to,” she mutters, looking down. “You lot had your thumbs up your asses, figured I’d just speed it up a bit.”

Gendry’s smile grows ever so slightly, and he shakes his head. “No.” He slides his hands to her hair, and Arya realizes how _filthy_ it is, truly becomes aware of it, and she feels almost like Sansa for how much she regrets that fact, but then Gendry goes and spoils all of it by saying, “You survived.”

“I--”Arya looks up at him, and Gendry looks down at her, and their kiss is warmth on a cold day, and winter did come, but kissing Gendry is spring.

Arya never wants to stop.

He has other ideas, though.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Gendry says, wrinkling his nose and pulling away. “No offense, but you kind of smell like shit.”

“You always smell like shit,” Arya grumbles, a bit dazed, a little starry-eyed, fully in love.

“I won’t deny that. Not all of us grew up in fancy castles, you know,” Gendry comments lightly, taking her by the hand and leading her to a tub of water in the corner. “I thought you might like to…” He trails off and gestures at the warm-ish water, steam rising ever so slightly off the surface. “If you wanted to? It was hotter an hour ago, just, with you bein’ the hero of the day and all that--”

“Thank you.”

Arya grips the side of the tub and feels her entire body tremble, shaking worse than a newborn pup. She fumbles with the fastenings on her armor, but her hands slip once, twice, and she grits her teeth, feeling pathetic and useless and weak.

Stronger hands come to work at the ties, and Arya closes her eyes and fights the urge to fight Gendry, to tell him to stop, that she can handle herself, thank you very much, she doesn’t need blacksmith’s boys to undress her, but his hands are steady and firm; it grounds her too much for her to complain. He eases the pieces away from her body, and works her shirt off and over her head - she can hear the air suck between his teeth, no doubt at the horrific bruising she’s sure is there, the bruising from the broken ribs she’d caught while fending off the dead - and she waits for him to apply the same treatment to her pants.

He doesn’t do anything. Arya furrows her brow, eyes still closed, assuming Gendry’s getting a good, hard look at the scars on her side, the ones that almost reach her spine, and she already knows she won’t tell him where they’re from, maybe ever. A girl has no past, after all. But, the questions don’t come.

After five seconds, she opens her eyes and turns to face him, and sees that he’s standing there with his hands at his sides, his eyebrows lowered, a thoughtful frown on his face.

“What is it?” She whispers, searching his face for answers, wondering if he’ll kiss her, if he’ll be caught up in the fact that _they survived_ \- if she weren’t so tired, she thinks she’d feel the same way, thinks she’d allow herself to feel the same way - but he doesn’t lift her and fuck her against the side of the tub, doesn’t make her forget her reclaimed name.

Instead, he lifts his hands, and for the first time she can recall, they’re shaking. They didn’t falter last night, when he’d gripped her to him and made her flesh sing in a way she’d always thought she wouldn’t care about (but when had Gendry _ever_ been in the plans? He makes her want to live, and that’s dangerous for a girl who walks with death). But now, in the grey light of day, they’re shaking, and she doesn’t understand why.

Until she does.

He fits his hands slowly on either side of her neck, his thumbs resting but not pressing against the column of her throat, now exposed with her armor and shirt off. Arya shivers, exposed in her nakedness, but Gendry’s expression makes him appear the more vulnerable of the two. His eyes promise to haunt her later, his thumbs still dancing lightly over her throat as he studies her skin under his hands, and Arya gazes up at him.

“You …” Gendry shakes his head, unable to finish it at first. “Your neck, Arya.”

“It’s alright,” Arya insists, her body now fairly aching, both at the thought of the water, and the thought of being near him. “I’ve had much worse.”

Gendry ducks his head down and presses a featherlight kiss at the corner of her jaw, and Arya closes her eyes again, wondering _again_ if she’s dead, if this is some kindness given to her by the Lord of Light before oblivion snatches her away permanently, but Gendry’s lips slide over the bruises on her neck tenderly, and Arya runs her fingers through his shorn hair, marveling at the texture under her fingertips, and it’s not a molten heat of the forge that passes through them, but a warmth of sunlight, and Arya isn’t sure which she prefers, but it’s nice to know that with Gendry, she won’t have to pick. She can have her fill in equal measures.

“The water’s getting cold,” Arya informs him primly, and he pulls away sheepishly, his hands still trailing over her throat until he pulls those away too. “I won’t take a bath in cold water. I’m not some kind of peasant.”

“Of course not,” Gendry nods with a smile. “Lady Stark.”

She snorts while undoing her pants and lets them drop to the floor as well; she climbs into the tub, tossing a, “I told you not to call me that,” over her shoulder, hissing at the twinge in her ribs, hissing at the way the warm water runs over her sore muscles, but when she’s settled against the back of the tub, she lifts an eyebrow imperiously at him. “Well? Aren’t you coming in?”

Gendry sighs but pulls his shirt over his head. “As you wish, milady.”

The water spills over the side of the tub when he finally climbs in, a little cooler than is comfortable, but Arya finds that she doesn’t care at all.

A girl is Arya Stark.

A girl has no name.

A girl loves Gendry Waters.

And they survived.

**Author's Note:**

> So, the title is a reference to two things:
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> My GIRL Arya Stark, the Princess Who Was Promised!!!!
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> Robert Baratheon telling Ned Stark that he has a son and Ned has a daughter and they'll join their houses...
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> AKA the two things that were promised!
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> Anyway, thank you for reading, I had a lot of fun writing this!!!! (and I'm so deliriously happy that my girl got to be The Hero, yesss)


End file.
